Spillway systems are pretty fascinating things and until recently, I had never seen one in full action. I expected it to be similar to that of a waterfall, but no, these are completely different. The beast was raging, and it scared me. Colossal amounts of water cascaded the huge steps, colliding into powerful vortex at it’s centre. At first I was slightly gutted. Gutted that the spillway we wanted to abseil was full of water smashing at a rapid rate.
Fast forward to 6 months later, we’re back at Digsley Reservoir, sat on the beautiful octagonal walkway. Scott and Little Mike are in deep discussion about possible rigging actions – attempting the gauge the depth, while Doctor T and Myself film random shit on his videocamera. Aside from wondering whether we had brought a long enough length of rope, the main problem, and biggest danger with abseiling spillways are the contact points between the masonry and rope. It really doesn’t take much to slice, so protecting these were important, as well as having adequate backups.
There is something deeply intriguing about these huge vaginas and rappelling into them. I think there is always a natural desire to enter places which are not fit for humankind, it’s just some people can easily choose to ignore it, whereas finding a way to get around these relative barriers is fun – be it dangerous, illegal or neither.
Biggest shout outs to T-Doc, LM for heading down first, and of course Scott for rigging & for hittin’ it on a Fig8.
